Holiday Exotica

Holiday Exotica is the first ever visual guide to how we once satisfied our wanderlust. This globetrotting tour of nostalgic travel brochures voyages alphabetically from Africa to Yugoslavia, reflecting our shifting attitudes to tourism. Going anywhere nice? By coach, cruise or even Concorde? Holiday Exotica will take you on a globetrotting tour of vintage holiday brochures.

This first ever visual guide to how we once satisfied our wanderlust, both at home and abroad, travels alphabetically from Africa and Australia to the United States and Yugoslavia, with excursions to Bognor Regis, Belfast and all points in between. Exchanging everyday drizzle and drudgery for exotic cocktails and beach loungers, these rare, nostalgic brochures reflect our shifting attitudes to tourism in the pre-internet era, when travellers were lured by designs promising a jet-set paradise with perfect weather. Discover how holidays were marketed to an eager post-war public – where Berlin is ‘worth a trip’ and the clouds look curiously ominous at the Hotel New Hiroshima in Japan.

Jump in the car and take a groovy 1960s motoring vacation across Italy, where cosmopolitan ancient civilisations might broaden your mind. Or relax at a 1970s Pontins, alongside hundreds of your fellow sunworshippers and their kids. So, pack your suitcase because you’re booked for two weeks of all-inclusive sun (catching rays in Benidorm), sand (between your toes in Jamaica) and seasickness (a day trip to France on a Sealink ferry).

With Holiday Exotica, you can travel without leaving your deckchair.